Tales to Astonish #82 – The Power of Iron Man!

Well – I can’t leave my loyal readers in the lurch here and Marvel seems to have agreed that what happens in Tales to Astonish #82 is part of the Iron Man story.  Both means of reprinting the Iron Man stories, Marvel Masterworks: Iron Man Volume 3 and Essential Iron Man Vol. 2 as well as the upcoming Omnibus, include this issue in their collections.

What is odd about the story presented, apart from taking off into another title,  is that it is not done by Stan Lee and Gene Colan.  Colan in particular who had been working together on Sub-Mariner stories with Lee as well since making the character a regular co-feature of Tales to Astonish so it is contra-intuitive to what would otherwise seem to make for an easy crossover, that the same creative team working on parallel books would cut out for a vacation break just when they had brought the two characters  together but that was what happened. While the plot was by Stan and some initial pencil work is done by Gene the tour de force battle of this issue is brought forth by Jack Kirby and scripted by a then 25-year old Roy Thomas.

The cover itself doesn’t do justice to the fight contained the pages as Jack Kirby lets fly the punches and action as only he could do. As reader of Marvel and admirer of big Kirby action I thought I was familiar with his great fighting sequences in the FF, Thor and Captain America but this issue ranks up there with those. This also being Sub-Mariner’s book one would think that the fight would tilt toward his perspective and superiority over his foe but again expectation is foiled. Perhaps it was Kirby’s preferences for the ‘thinking fighter’ or redress for the retreat by Iron Man in his own title but here the armored Avenger kicks butt big time and is far more the hero. In one case Iron Man averts the berserk prince from using a device of untested devastating power from the Stark factory and saves perhaps more than his own life. It however can’t all be Kirby’s doing as Tony Stark, not Namor the Sub-Mariner, that closes out the story in Tales to Astonish with his worries and decisions in his civilian guise.

Reprinted in King-Sized Special Invincible Iron Man #1,1970 and in Marvel Super-Heroes #37, 1973